Troubleshoot Nest camera alerts

Google Nest cameras have advanced sound and motion detection that can help you monitor things without being distracted by background activity. But if you get too many or too few camera alerts, or if you don't get notified of activity when you expect, here are some things that you can do to make camera alerts work better for you.

Note: This applies to all Nest cameras, Google Nest Doorbells and Nest Hub Max.

General troubleshooting

If you don’t get any camera alerts when you expect to, here are a few things you should try:

• Home app settings are off by default. You can turn notifications on or off at any time.
• Check that your camera is powered on. Most Nest cameras need to be plugged into a power socket to stream video and send notifications. If you have a battery-powered camera, make sure that it’s charged.
• Make sure that your camera is online in the app.
• Make sure that notifications from your camera are turned on in the app.

Tip: Parcel alerts can work better with Person detection also turned on. If you don’t get parcel alerts when you think you should, make sure that Person detection alerts are turned on for the camera or doorbell.

Turn on Person detection in the Home app
Turn on Person detection in the Nest app

Too few camera alerts

Your camera detected something but you didn't get a camera alert

Nest cameras are designed to alert you when they detect important activity, so that you don’t get bombarded by notifications. While your camera may notify you when it first detects activity, it shouldn’t send additional notifications as the activity continues.

For example, if you don’t get a notification when someone walked in front of your camera, it may have been because it already detected similar activity moments before.

To troubleshoot the issue:

Check your camera’s video history for activity that your camera records. That way, you can easily view everything your camera has picked up, even if you didn’t receive an alert.

Video history in the Google Home app
Video history in the Nest app

Something happened but your camera didn't detect it

Nest cameras determine when something moves based on how much an image changes over a short period of time. So, your camera may not send an alert if the following is true:

• The activity is out of your camera’s field of view.
• An object is blocking the camera’s view.
• The camera is very far away from the activity.
• The lighting in the scene is dim or washed out.

To troubleshoot the issue:

You might have to move your camera, change your camera’s angle or change something in the scene so that you don’t miss important activity. 

Event detection accuracy

Cameras and doorbells use machine learning to ensure notifications are as accurate as possible, but the technology isn’t always perfect. Your camera is more likely to accurately detect objects that are larger, nearby and within clear view of the camera. And your camera or doorbell may misidentify things like:

• Confuse a picture with a real event. For example, a picture of a dog on a t-shirt might trigger an 'Activity or animal' event.
• A person could be misidentified as an animal in some situations, like if they’re crawling on the ground, or bent over to do housework.
• Close relatives can be misidentified.
• Other objects, such as a shadow or bush, may be misidentified by event detection.

Note: In some cases, your camera or doorbell may correctly identify an object that’s hard for you to find in the recording. This can happen if the object was far away, hard to see in the scene or only visible for a short time.

Too many camera alerts

If you get too many notifications from your camera, here are a few things that you can do to help:

Adjust which activity you get notifications for

If you need to, you can turn off notifications for certain kinds of events so that your camera will only send alerts for the types of activity that you care about.

Note: Anyone who can access your camera in the app can adjust which notifications they get without affecting anyone else. For example, one person can choose to get notifications for all event types, while someone else might want to only get notifications about motion in a specific zone.

Follow the app instructions for your camera to adjust its notifications.

Home app

1. Open the Home app .
2. Tap and hold your device's tile.
3. Tap Settings .
4. Select Notifications.
5. Choose which events you want to turn notifications off for. Note: If you turn an event off altogether, your camera won't send you a notification when that kind of activity is detected. The event also isn’t marked in your camera’s video history.

Nest app

1. Open the Nest app .
2. On the home screen, select your camera.
3. Tap Settings   Notifications.
4. Choose which events you want to turn notifications off for.

For sound notifications, you can also change your Nest camera’s speaker, microphone and audio settings. Bear in mind that if you turn off the microphone, the live stream and recorded video won’t have any audio.

Set up Activity Zones to reduce unwanted notifications

If your camera detects a lot of activity in a specific area (for example, a busy pavement), you can create a zone and set notifications for activity outside the zone only. If you set notifications for activity outside the zone, it can help when you get too many camera alerts but don’t want to turn notifications off completely.

Note: If you've already set up Activity Zones, the Home app should automatically create a zone for you in the area outside your zones.

Follow the app instructions for your camera to use Activity Zones to reduce notifications.

 Home app

1. Open the Home app .
2. Tap and hold your device's tile.
3. Tap Settings   tap Events  Seen events.
4. Under 'Activity Zones', tap Add a zone to mark the area that you don’t want to receive alerts about. To save, tap Confirm .
5. After you set up a zone, go back to your camera’s settings tap Notifications.
6. Choose the zone that you just created.
7. Make sure that notifications for any enabled events for the zone are turned off.
8. Go back to Seen events  tap Outside of zone.
9. Turn on the events and notifications that you want to get.

Your camera won't send you notifications for activity in that zone, but you can still get notifications for activity in other areas in its view.

Nest app

1. Open the Nest app .
2. On the home screen, select your camera.
3. Tap Settings   Activity Zones  Create Zone to mark the area that you don’t want to receive alerts about.
4. After you set up a zone, go back to your camera’s settings  tap Notifications.
5. Make sure that the Activity Zone that you just created has both People and All other motion alerts unticked.
6. Go back to Notifications  tap Motion outside of a zone.
7. Tick the alerts that you want to get.

Your camera won’t send you notifications for activity in that zone, but you can still get notifications for activity in other areas in its view.

Troubleshoot notifications and emails

If you don't get alerts, or if you get alerts but you think you shouldn’t, you can troubleshoot notifications and emails from Nest.